Constructing Asia: An Emerging Model of Migrant Labor Exportation

This article explores how global forces are reshaping the form of labor migration in the region. China has become an important influence reshaping the Asian region through increased foreign direct investment (FDI) in public construction projects such as roads, railways, and ports. As Chinese companies expand operations overseas they often bring their own workforce, exporting hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrant workers. These workers migrate under the umbrella of Chinese multinational companies and represent a fast-growing form of labor export migration called, “project contract migration.” This expansion of project contract migration represents an important form of temporary migrant worker programs which are generally governed by either labor brokers and/or bi-lateral agreements among states, and are characterized by receiving countries only accepting immigrants under “strict functional and temporal limits” (Castles, 2004: 23).  In contrast, China’s emerging labor export model is an example of multinational corporation-led migration with a new twist.  Historically, multinational corporation-led migration has taken the form of high-skilled professionals being relocated from developed nations into developing countries (Findlay, 1990; Stahl, 1991) while China’s multinational companies are exporting both high and low skilled workers.

According to China’s Ministry of Commerce the number of Chinese workers sent abroad has risen from about 2,000 in 1979 to around 6.5 million in 2013. Roughly 812,000 of these overseas Chinese workers are now employed by Chinese companies in the form of project contract workers, and if we include illegal or undocumented migrants, these numbers would double. This article focuses understanding why Chinese multinationals are importing their own laborers instead of using local labor. I argue that this emerging model of labor exportation creates a kind of extraterritoriality that allows Chinese multinationals to evade national and international regulations designed to protect worker and migrant rights and increasing worker control.